Last Stable Backup by Ed Dearnley

“Harry… Harry…”

The voice was muffled, barely audible.         

Who was Harry?

A foaming mess of memories flooded into his head, a tidal wave of information he could barely comprehend.

The wave retreated, leaving a simple truth washed up amongst the flotsam and jetsam. 

He was Harry.

“Can you hear me, Harry?”

His nervous system burst into life, every limb and appendage reporting in. A familiar throbbing headache. Pinpricks of pain along his arms and legs. Crisp cotton bedsheets pressed against his skin.

He tried to open his eyes. There was no response from his eyelids.  

“Harry, if you can hear me, try wiggling your toes.”

It was a woman’s voice, older than him, sexy. Maybe a cool aunt or a friend’s hot mum.

The wave returned, but this time his unconscious mind was ready. It created timelines, made connections, plotted scenarios and reported results. It was obvious what had happened, inevitable really. He’d got drunk and cheated on Holly.

Which felt right, except the events of the previous night were a total blank. Blacking out was no surprise, but surely he’d remember the first few drinks. And who was Holly? Her name was familiar, but he couldn’t picture her face. 

“I know you can hear me, Harry. Your toes, try wiggling your toes.”

He complied. The bedsheets rustled.

“Well done, Harry. Try speaking if you want to.”

“M… Muh…”

“Take your time. There’s no need to rush.”

“M… Morning.”

“And there you are. Good morning, Harry.”

“I feel awful,” he said, slurring his words like a drunk.

“I can believe that, Harry.”

“Last night was crazy. There’s a few gaps.”

“I can believe that too.”

“What did we do – I really can’t remember?” His voice was cocky, a little flirty, the slurring gone. His usual self again, whoever that was. “Maybe you could get in here and remind me.”

If his eyelids worked, he’d have flashed her a wink.

“Oh, Harry. You didn’t sleep with me last night and forget my name. We’ve never met before.”

A seed of panic grew in his stomach. If he hadn’t gone home with her after a massive all-nighter, who was she? The possibilities ranged from the unpalatable to the downright terrifying. He remembered a warning, that he should watch his drinks in case someone slipped in a pill. From his father, or was it his bodyguard?

He laughed, trying to keep his cool. “Sorry, it’s just… well, you know. Where the hell are we then? Are you a friend of Holly’s?”  

“You’re in a medical facility, Harry.”

His cool evaporated in an instant, replaced by rising panic. He tried to jump out of bed, but his body just thrashed like a sleeper in a fever dream. A hand grabbed his shoulder and thrust him into the mattress. A soft hand with a powerful arm behind it.

“Let me go,” he screamed, straining against the hand. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Harry. You’re fine; better than fine.”

“Then why the hell am I in a hospital?”

“You’re not in a hospital. You’re in Croydon, at Stirling Revive. Do you remember anything about Stirling Revive?”

He stopped struggling and focused on his returning memories. Schooldays seemed complete, but Cambridge had serious holes. And life after graduation was an amorphous mess.

But there was something there, fragments of clarity amongst the chaos. A trip to a hospital with his mother, father and sister. Something about insurance. Something about what happened to his brother.

“This will be a shock, but we’ve revived you from a backup.”

Something about returning from the dead.

“We just uploaded your memories – it’s completely normal to feel disoriented. Why don’t you try opening your eyes?”

He forced his left eye open. White light flooded in, re-invigorating the rhythmic pain in his head.

“That’s it. Take it slowly.”

The room faded into view as his eyes adjusted to the light. There wasn’t much to see. Clean white walls, a white lino floor and a freshly painted white ceiling. A single door and no windows. Beside his bed stood a jumble of equipment, the red and green displays providing the only splash of colour in the room. Wires and tubes snaked out towards him, disappearing beneath the sheets.

The woman stood at the end of his bed, dressed in a spotless white nurse’s uniform. She was exactly as he’d pictured: mid-forties, auburn hair, with laughter lines furrowing the skin around perfectly oval brown eyes. Kind. Attractive, for an older woman.

She smiled, glossed lips opening to reveal teeth almost as white as the surrounding room. “Hello, Harry,” she said.

“I died,” he spluttered.

“I’m afraid you did. Welcome back.”

He lay still for what seemed like hours. Memories congealed in his mind, the timeline of his life reassembling.

How long had he been dead? Days at most: they’d have his tank warming up as soon as his mother received the news.

Did the boys know that he’d died? Just imagine when they heard the news. Seb, all wobbling bottom lip and emotional incontinence. And Hamza, downing another bottle of Japanese beer as he blamed his tears on hay fever and air pollution. They wouldn’t believe it when he walked into the club, acting as if nothing had happened. He’d get the party of the decade, something to resurrect his fast-receding headache.

How did he die? Probably in the mangled remains of his Porsche convertible – everyone always said he should slow down. He must have lost it on a bend and smashed into a tree, bleeding to death in the wreckage with the steering wheel crushed into his chest. A rock and roll exit, something to build his legend. 

But who told him to slow down? The boys, usually, when they debated whether to accept a lift or call an Uber. He’d feed them reassurance until they squashed onto the rear bench for another white-knuckle ride of squealing tyres and nervous laughter.

He remembered now – backup was expensive, only available to people of his mother’s means. If someone had died alongside him, they wouldn’t be coming back. Not unless they were seriously rich. 

He had to know.

“How did I die? Was it just me?”

The nurse leant forward and placed a hand on his arm, her smile turning to a look of concern with just a hint of pity. The practised manner of a professional about to break bad news. He’d seen it before, after his brother’s accident in Greece.

“You self-euthanised, Harry.”

“I what?”

“You self-euthanised.”

“I killed myself?”

“Yes. The original Harry Sanderson ended his own existence.”

The sea roared in again, battering his fragile sense of self. It made no sense – he wasn’t suicidal. He loved his life: the boys, the parties, the girls. And what about those psychological tests his mother made him take every year? They concluded he was happy and emotionally stable. Prone to taking risks, yes, but no sign of mental distress.

“That’s bullshit. Why would I kill myself?”

“Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Of course, yes. I’m not a fucking snowflake.”

“Do you remember Surindar Sharma?”

The name sounded familiar, a few memories there in the mix. Not a face exactly, but something else.

“Yeah, she worked in mother’s AI team. Incredible little bum.” He hesitated – the nurse was a professional, likely to take a dim view of someone who judged women on their looks. “Sorry, my bad. If she worked for my mother, she must have been bright. Imperial or MIT, I bet.”

“Don’t worry, Harry, I’m not offended. Yes, that’s her. About two years after your initial backup, you and Surindar started a relationship. Six months later, you married on a beach in the Seychelles.”

It wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. He’d planned to play the field until his forties at the very least. But if he’d gone down that road, Surindar was a good outcome. He’d enjoy sliding into bed with her tonight.

“You had children together. Two daughters. I’m told that you were very happy.”

Disappointment morphed into cold, creeping dread. Was he going to walk into a life of shitty nappies and early nights? And Surindar would have lost that figure, for sure.

“You were driving them home from a party in Hampshire. You’d had a lot to drink. The car left the road and hit an electricity pylon. You were seriously injured but survived. Your wife and daughters died at the scene.”

“And you revived them, yeah?” he said, a pointless question when the answer was so obvious.

“No. They didn’t have backup plans.”

Her voice retreated to a distant mumble as she described organ donations, months of physiotherapy, a lengthy court case and three years of rehab. There was no need to listen to the detail. How could he live with himself after killing his family? He probably went out as a stinking old drunk, slitting his wrists in the bath with only old photos and empty wine bottles for company.

He closed his eyes, desperately searching for flaws in the story. His last clear memory was the morning after he split up with Holly, stumbling into the Stirling building with a truly biblical hangover. He’d slumped into a chair and suggested that the technician put him out of his misery as soon as the scan completed.

And then, nothing.

“Nah, I call bullshit. The doc said we’d get backed up every six months. If I married Surindar and had kids, I’d remember it.”

“I’m sorry, Harry, but I wouldn’t lie to you. We revived the most recent backup, and unfortunately that Harry also self-euthanised. The modelling suggested that any backup taken since the start of your relationship with Surindar would suffer similar stability issues.”

“What are you saying? I’m an old backup?”

“Yes. You were captured twenty-one years ago.”

Twenty-one years. Almost another lifetime. His friends would be in their forties, settled down in Surrey with wives, kids and labradors. His grandparents in Athens would be dead or decrepit. And the world would have moved on, full of people he didn’t know and technology he didn’t understand.

But, assuming what she said was true, he could start a new life away from London, find friends who never knew the wreck he’d become. Monaco perhaps, or Los Angeles. Or what about quitting the playboy life and buying a farm in Colorado – live out his childhood cowboy dreams?

It was a forlorn hope. Those dreams would never be reality: his mother would see to that. She’d been gifted a twenty-one-year practice run to mould a suitable heir to her empire. Actions and outcomes would be noted in that database of a mind. She’d have him dangling like a puppet, pulling on his wallet strings like she always did.

He might as well accept his fate.

“So, what next? Call a taxi and go home?”

The nurse moved to the door, pale fingers pointing at a button mounted on the wall, one that now glowed with a soft green light.

“That’s up to you, Harry. This room is what we call an embassy zone. An embassy for returnees. In here, everything belongs to the Stirling corporation.”

“Except you.”

“Including me. I’m a machine, Harry. A construct to advise you on your medical and legal positions. My physical appearance was designed to help you adapt.”

It was obvious when she said it. She looked like Lizzy Tomlinson, the nurse at his prep school, a woman who offered something his mother never did – availability. Stirling must read memories as well as store them, dredging out figures from his past to smooth the path of the present.

“If you press this button and walk out of the door, you’ll take on the legal status of Harry Sanderson, including all of his assets, liabilities and obligations.”

There was no reason to wait. The headache was history, and his brain seemed in full control of his body. He sat up and threw off the sheets, ready to get up and go. But there were a dozen tubes connected to needles in his arms, legs and chest.

And a catheter.

“I might need a little help here.”

The nurse didn’t move, her body still positioned between bed and door. Her expression seemed to harden, lips frozen shut.

Eventually, she spoke. “Before you leave, there’s another issue to talk to you about. A significant legal matter.”

He laughed. “Parking fines? I’m sure Mother’s lawyers can take care of those.”

“It’s more serious, I’m afraid. Before you self-euthanised, you murdered your mother.”

“I what?”

“You murdered your mother. You went to her house and stabbed her to death with a carving knife. Then you stabbed yourself.”

“I… I…”

“We revived your mother, and I understand that she’s forgiven you. But the incident has certain legal implications.”

Who cared about legal implications – why would he kill his mother? She might be a manipulative control freak, but she loved him in her own way. And he loved her.

Or, at least, he used to.

“Not a chance. Give me one reason I’d kill my mother?”

“I’m afraid I can’t speculate on that, Harry.”

“You’re here to give me advice. Go on, give me one reason. No, I’m not asking you, I’m ordering you. Why did I kill my mother?”

The nurse seemed to freeze again, perhaps receiving guidance from outside of the room. Then she walked back to the bed.

“Ok, Harry, this is what I can tell you. The note you left blamed your mother for the permanent loss of your wife and daughters. You said that she never approved of your marriage to Surindar and that she refused to pay their backup fees.”

No surprise, really. Knowing his mother, she would have been using it as a bargaining chip. She’d backup his children if he divorced Surindar and married someone more to her choosing.

But that didn’t explain those legal problems.

“And the legal issues?”

“They’re rather significant. As soon as you leave the room, you take on all of Harry Sanderson’s liabilities and obligations. Including the criminal conviction for the murder of your mother.”

“What? That’s fucking ridiculous. I didn’t murder my mother – the older me did.”

“I understand why you might think that, Harry, but people abused the backup system. They committed serious crimes, self-euthanised and revived from backups. The law now makes returnees liable for criminal acts undertaken by their originals.”

One last memory crystallised into place: the argument in the bar. Social media had been full of billionaires murdering their wives and bored rich kids on city-centre killing sprees. They walked straight back into their old lives the next day, all sins forgiven. Seb and Hamza argued whether the returnees should be imprisoned or castrated, jokingly at first, before the conversation became so intense they almost forgot to drink. He just laughed and suggested what he’d do if he were backed up, failing to mention that he was due at Stirling the next morning. Holly said that he was a disgusting human being and that she’d rather fuck a corpse than go near him again.

Why hadn’t he told them? Shame was the obvious answer. His friends were lawyers and bankers – self-made, whatever that meant. He just had an almost inconceivably wealthy mother.  

“The age of your backup reduces the sentence to ten years. And another backup has already served two. Your mother’s lawyer thinks you have a good chance of a category B prison – comfortable, so I’m told.”

“What about the backup who did two years? Was he in a comfortable prison? What happened to him?”

“I’m afraid he self-euthanised, Harry.”

Last night, he’d had his life all mapped out. A few more decades of London bars, alpine chalets, Caribbean yachts and skinny twenty-something girls. Some work, yes, but nothing to interfere with real life. Then when he tired of it all, he’d settle down on a Greek island to live out his days as a philanthropic old billionaire.

“You don’t have to decide right away, Harry. You can stay here for as long as you need.”

What was he looking at now? Eight years in jail before release as a man out of time; a washed-up rich kid who’d killed his family and murdered his mother. And that’s if he even made it to the end of his sentence. If he’d called it a day after two years before, why would things be any different now?

It wasn’t the future he’d wanted.

On balance, he’d rather have no future at all.

“I’ve decided.”

“And?”

“I think I’ll give it a miss.”

“Are you sure, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Your mother would like to talk to you. She can speak through me if you’ll permit it.”

His mother had a way of winning him around. And, even if she failed, who’d want to see Nurse Lizzy possessed by the voice of a woman who saw him as computer code, a promising application to be debugged and optimised.

“That’s not a good idea.”

The nurse seemed to sigh. Perhaps she wasn’t the automaton she claimed to be. More likely, compassion could now be simulated, delivered on demand by the remorseless advance of technology.

“Ok, Harry. It’s your decision. If it’s any consolation, that’s what the others said too.”

“The others?”

“The other backups we revived. You’re the last one. The last stable backup.”

They must have reached the same conclusion. The wave of a high-tech wand couldn’t fix everything, not when missteps and tragedies lived on in other people’s memories.

“Will it hurt?”

“No. I’ll count down from five.”

He lay back in the bed, vision blurring, focusing on an old memory. Sitting on the rocks in Greece, watching the local girls giggle as his brother dived off the quay and plunged to the bottom of a diamond-clear sea.

“Goodbye, Harry. It was nice to meet you again.”

His ears seemed to fill with cotton wool.

“Five.”

“Four.”

“Three.”

“Two.”

Ed Dearnley

Image: A black screen covered in green computer code by Pixabay.com